UTT's Utilities Engineering Unit has over the last year been in partnership with Arizona State University, with a focus on student final year projects, the ASU Global Resolve Project and STEAM Machine Project. 

In 2012, the Utilities department partnered with ASU to form E-Teams, allowing students to work with their international colleagues on their Final year projects. UTT and ASU jointly applied for a National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) grant for this initiative but were not successful. With guidance from the NCIIA administrators, the parties were encouraged to try again, and another application for 2013 was since resubmitted. ASU Faculty leads have since proposed a visit to UTT on October 14th -15th to explore further areas of collaboration.

ABOUT ASU

Arizona State University (commonly referred to as ASU or Arizona State) is a national space grant institution and public metropolitan research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is the largest public university in the United States by enrollment. Arizona State's mission is to create a model of the "New American University" whose efficacy is measured "by those it includes and how they succeed, not by those it excludes".

ASU awards bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees, and is broadly organized into 16 colleges and schools spread across four campuses: the original Tempe campus, the West campus in northwest Phoenix, the Polytechnic campus in eastern Mesa, and the Downtown Phoenix campus.

All four campuses are accredited as a single institution by the Higher Learning Commission. The University is categorized as a Research University with very high research activity (RU/VH) as reported by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, with a research expenditure of $385 million in 2012. Arizona State is one of the appointed members of the Universities Research Association, a consortium of 86 leading research-oriented universities.

FAST FACTS

- Student Headcount Enrollment : 73,378

- ASU President: Michael Crow Ph.D., Public Administration (Science and Technology Policy)

- Spread over 4 Locations: Tempe Campus, West Campus, Polytechnic Campus, Downtown Phoenix Campus.

UTT/ASU AREAS OF COLLABORATION

1. ASU GlobalResolve project. http://globalresolve.asu.edu/ . ASU Project Coordinator: Prof. Mark Henderson and Dr. Odesma Dalrymple

This project is more of a community development type project. It involves the design/building of engineering systems that can benefit a community. Last academic year three students from the Utilities engineering department of UTT formed E-Teams with students from ASU and worked on selected projects. The three UTT students also participated online with the ASU students in an ASU developed course called "Designing for the Developing World".

The UTT students who participated last academic year and their projects are:

This year four students from the Utilities department at UTT are currently participating

FOLLOW-UP INITIATIVE

UTT currently seeking international funding for such a partnership which will enable students to visit each other's University and engage in a collaborative curricular experience. The curricular will be built on 4 student-centered platforms these include:

• Empowering students with entrepreneurship, innovation and technological skills
• Developing students' e-teaming skills so they can establish, maintain and effectively function on geographically distributed E-Teams without the need for face-to-face interactions.
• Providing students with the opportunity to interact and solve real problems.
• Providing students with the support to bring their developed ideas to market

2. The STEAM Labs. ASU Project coordinator: Dr. Odesma Dalrymple

The STEAM lab initiative is to be used as a tool to teach innovation to year 1 students. The students will have hands on practice in designing and building a simple gadget in collaboration with students from Universities outside Trinidad. It will also be used as a tool to teach innovation and entrepreneurship to high school students. UTT and ASU are still seeking funding for this project.

3. Study Abroad Programme ASU Project Coordinator: Prof. Mark Henderson and Dr. Odesma Dalrymple

The Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) at ASU has recently received a grant from the Walton Foundation that includes engagement in sustainability projects in terms of the triple bottom line (social, economic and environmental) in collaboration with universities outside the USA. ASU's GlobalResolve program is connected with GIOS and will lead this particular project, which will involve knowledge exchange between ASU and the partnering universities in Trinidad and Tobago. Partners will host students from ASU, and a joint curriculum between the partners and ASU will be delivered to both ASU and UTT students. GlobalResolve concentrates in on-the-ground projects as we have done jointly with UTT over the past year. We will continue with a project-based curriculum during the study abroad visit. Funding will be provided for the securing of the resources related to the curriculum. Prof. Henderson will provide additional details on this proposed initiative when he visits.

ASU Representatives visiting The University of Trinidad and Tobago

Prof. Mark Henderson

Mark Henderson is Associate Dean of the Barrett Honors College and Professor of Engineering at ASU's Polytechnic campus in the College of Technology and Innovation. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University. His areas of interest include human-centered design (especially for the developing world), global teaming, geometric modeling and design thinking. He is a co-founder of InnovationSpace, a transdisciplinary curriculum that teaches students how to develop products that create market value while serving real societal needs and minimizing impacts on the environment. Henderson is also a co-founder of GlobalResolve, a social entrepreneurship program designed to provide student opportunities by involving them in world-wide technological entrepreneurship projects that directly improve the lives of underprivileged people, especially those in developing countries. The program works with global partners to develop sustainable technologies and community ventures in the areas of energy, clean water and health. GlobalResolve currently works in 10 developing countries including Ghana, India, Mexico and Arizona. He has received the President's Innovation Award in 2009 and the Alumni Association Creasman Award in 2008.

Dr. Odesma Dalrymple

Odesma Dalrymple is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at ASU's Polytechnic campus in the College of Technology and Innovation. She holds a B.S. in electrical engineering, and an MEng. in industrial engineering, both from Morgan State University. Her Ph.D. From Purdue University, and current scholarly work, are in the field of engineering education. Her professional pursuits are focused on reimagining engineering through education based on a scholarly understanding of the changing nature of the engineering profession, and how people learn to become practitioners. This mission is partially actualized through her research which seeks to identify, develop and evaluate tools and techniques that can be readily applied in real learning environments to improve student learning, and teaching. Much of her work has been done using design-based research methodology, i.e., a framework that allows researchers to simultaneously pursue the goals of developing effective learning environments and using such environments as naturalistic laboratories to study learning and teaching. She has pursued two main lines of research: The first looks at artifact-inspired discovery–based pedagogy, i.e., learning activities where students' exploration of STEM knowledge is self-directed and motivated by interactions or manipulations of artifacts. The second looks at the development of faculty expertise in outcomes-based course design through the use of the Instructional Module Development (imod) system, a self-guided web-based training tool (under development), funded through the National Science Foundation.